As promised, here is my high/low post for the week. I will be dating this back to the start of the 7 days I am posting about. I will be trying to do this every Thursday.
This week our high was Angelina's
endocrinologist's appointment on June 20th. It was also our low. This was her third visit since diagnosis in March and was exactly 12 weeks from diagnosis. This is part of why I am posting on Thursdays. I was born on a Thursday. Angelina was diagnosed on a Thursday. And, coincidentally, Angelina's endocrinologist is only in the office we see her at on (you guessed it) Thursdays.
So, last Thursday we saw Dr. S and I told her that Angelina has been having a lot of problems with her injections. A few weeks ago she seemed overly sensitized to them and every single shot was extremely painful for her no matter where we did it. I had contacted Dr. S and she suggested icing the area prior to the shots and it did help a little bit, but not much. After a few days it seemed to get somewhat better, but still painful. Angelina has been having
panic attacks and I suspect was dealing with some depression issues. She was very down, but also had the physical symptoms of depression like feeling very sluggish, achy, more tired than usual and just generally not enjoying anything. She's in the grieving process so some of that is to be expected and I have just been trying to keep things as positive as possible.
Anyway, the low part came because as I was relaying these issues to Dr. S Angelina just shut down. She climbed into my lap and curled up and wouldn't speak to anyone. I felt a few sobs from her but she was mostly just quiet and withdrawn. I went on to explain to Dr. S that this was actually pretty common recently, or quite the opposite where she had full-blown meltdown temper tantrums that would make any 2 year old proud. Angelina has always been an overly emotional child, but these recent episodes are way worse than anything we have experienced in the past.
The high part of all of this is that I brought up the pump again and Dr. S said she feels like it's a good idea at this point. I spoke with
Medtronic (the pump company we decided to go with) on Friday to give them all our information. Tuesday I got a call that our insurance pays for everything 100% and all they needed was the medical neccessity form from the dr. I just got the call in the middle or writing this post that the dr signed off today and her new purple medtronic
minimed paradigm revel 723 is shipping today and should arrive by Tuesday!
Another high is that in the news this week were several articles about the low-suspend pump that is currently in trials in the US. The medtronic vue is one of these pumps. Medtronic currently has a free technology upgrade, so if they come out with this in the next 4 years that Angelina is under warranty for the pump she is getting now she may be able to upgrade to the low-suspend pump for FREE. This is a step towards the
artificial pancreas devices that we will hopefully see in the next several years. A low-suspend pump works essentially the same as the current pumps, except it has a safety "switch" that will automatically suspend insulin distribution if the person's blood sugar is low. This is especially helpful (and life-saving) for people who experience nighttime low blood sugars that they may not wake up from.
Also, another mixed high/low was that last Thursday was Angelina's last day of 4th grade. This is great that she's out of school and not so great because it means she's home all day, every day driving me bonkers.
Here she is getting her hands all slimy with giraffe spit:
I came home with a nice sunburn, despite slathering on SPF 50 sunscreen:
This was our first trip to the SB Zoo, and while it is a small zoo I thought it was the perfect size, especially on a hot summer day, lol. Angelina as having a weird day and didn't want to eat anything for breakfast or lunch. We had gone out to breakfast before dropping David off at work and we did get her to eat some eggs and bacon, but I really think she was just trying to avoid a shot. Which, of course, is no surprise considering she's been having so many issues with them and is a big part of the reason she's going on an insulin pump soon. JDRF provided lunch at the zoo and had a nice spread of salad, sandwiches, chips, and cookies. She wanted nothing to do with any of it until I sat down with my food. She then decided she wanted salad, and she came back with a sandwich as well. I told her she could eat whatever she wanted but we needed to do her insulin. At which point she said "I'm not eating the bread, Mom!" and took the meat and toppings off and added the to her salad.
Her blood sugar was pretty steady throughout the day so I let her be. After that we were free to roam the zoo and we saw almost every exhibit. A lot of the animals were hiding out and avoiding the sun and heat as much as possible. Which of course means a lot of the exhibits there wasn't much to see. We headed home around 1:30 and I had her check her bg, she was 98 which was pretty awesome. She ate a pack of PB crackers at that point since I knew a crash was probably coming. We got home a little after 3pm and she handwashed my car for me while I hung out in the garage working on sewing her a pump pouch with a window. Around 5 she said she wasn't feeling well and checked her bg to see a 59. We treated and decided to grab some take out.
Seeing that low makes me suspect that she has been sneaking food the past 10 days that school has been out since it's the first one we've seen since school got out. She typically runs low in the afternoons and we had been dealing with daily lows, and now she's almost always high in the afternoon. I chalked it up to inactivity and maybe the heat or honeymoon backing off a bit, but now I'm thinking she's sneaking food when I'm not looking. Yet another reason I CANNOT freaking wait for her to get on the pump! She won't have any reason NOT to bolus, right?
